Audio Feature: Robert Okaji
When I say moon, I recall brown calves lowing / at night, sheltered under their mothers' calm grace / in star-studded pastures.
Audio Feature: Melissa Fite Johnson
We’re all something else / to someone else. Maybe he became better, a person / who hated sharing a body with the person he used to be.
Audio Feature: Laura Villareal
the turkeys arrive while I’m deciphering / the if this, then that of taxes.
Audio Feature: Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer
"I was thinking a lot about human mortality and environmental catastrophe, and how we all are momentary in the world"
Audio Feature: Sophia Terazawa
One / becomes my aunt. Enter AUNT in wide / angle shots. Flickers form infinite / possibilities cast on that screen.
Audio Feature: Rebekah Wolman (Shō No. 5)
as abecedarian. Beehive. Corner cabinet, desk / detritus. Earthshine. Faultline. As gristle and gall.
Audio Feature: Mollie O’Leary
It’s true—the scene is charged / with a heat surpassing what I endured to arrive here.
Audio Feature: Luke Johnson (Shō No. 3)
“This poem is one of many calls and/or responses to the poet Megan Merchant. Our co-authored collection A Slow Indwelling comes out Fall 2024 from Harbor Editions and deals with a father and mother wrestling through cultural violence, the fragility of childhood, the preciousness of a parents love, and the beauty and pain expressed through the natural world.”
Audio Feature: Megan Merchant (Shō No. 3)
This poem is part of a larger epistolary exchange, "A Slow Indwelling", with Luke Johnson, and will be published this fall with Harbor Editions.
Audio Feature: Jeddie Sophronius (Shō No. 5)
I’m more broken than I’ve ever been. / This shell of a body, emptied / and longing.
Audio Feature: Arah Ko (Shō No. 4)
These trees war scalded from the mountains, burnt stubble, replanted when my father was a child, now tall again.
Audio Feature: Donna Vorreyer (Shō No. 5)
The last night with my mother, I blinded like a snake in the blue, /
shed the skin of daughter and switched roles
Audio Feature: Eylie Sasajima (Shō No. 4)
i am here with you by the premade sushi. / by the out-of-season strawberries. / by the tofu.
Audio Feature: Mckendy Fils-Aimé (Shō No. 5)
we stumble through a forest / of awkward silences, careful not to touch // the brambles.
Audio Feature: Nyree Abrahamian (Shō No. 5)
I can think of a few things more entrenched, / like language, syllables strung together // in a lilt
Audio Feature: Corey Baron (Shō No. 5)
After all, what way is there to leave / a dance floor other than wet // & shaking under a mass of pleading / legs all huddled into a single moving // sacrifice—swaying tall & drowning / in bass?
Audio Feature: Jessica Nirvana Ram (Shō No. 5)
The days have been heavy lately, /
an albatross on each shoulder
Audio Feature: Nathan Xavier Osorio (Shō No. 4)
My mother fell in love with the way you cracked / into an urchin.
Audio Feature: Lana Matthews Sain (Shō No. 4)
I smelled like churned earth, breasts bouldered and leaked / through my support bra into my shirt / for days after his deathbirth.
Audio Feature: Eben E. B. Bein (Shō No. 4)
Mom, since we stopped / speaking, I've been searching / for the first word / you gave me.